Anthropology Professor Goes ‘Beyond #MeToo,’ Exploring Feminist Response to Racism and Sexism in Brazil

While the #MeToo campaign continues to make headlines in the United States, other countries are no strangers to viral feminist movements.

In an article for The Conversation co-authored by Alvaro Jarrin, assistant professor of anthropology at the College of the Holy Cross, the spotlight is turned on Brazil, whose women launched the #MeuPrimeiroAssedio, or #MyFirstHarrassment,” campaign in 2015, which not only went viral but led to more social media activism around gender equality.

The article explores these recent feminist movements and how they overlap specifically with the needs of Afro-Brazilian women, explaining that black and indigenous Brazilians are poorer than white Brazilians and that women of color experience higher rates of sexual violence in Brazil.

“Since both of us have recently published books — 'The Biopolitics of Beauty' and 'Health Equity in Brazil' — examining the impact of Brazilian medical practices on black women, we are particularly interested to see if Brazilian feminists will tackle two issues that particularly affect black women: health care and plastic surgery,” writes Jarrin and co-author Kia Lilly Caldwell, associate professor of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Read the full article at The Conversation.